Publication type
Journal Article
Series Number
Authors
Publication date
June 15, 2025
Summary:
Our article examines different predictors of the gender pay gap at the mean and for different income groups. Using the United Kingdom Household Panel Survey (UKHLS), we provide a detailed analysis of the effects of individual work histories, with up to 40 years of retrospective data examined alongside other key indicators. Work histories provide a powerful means of measuring the long-term effects of reduced labour force attachment on pay for women and for men. We find that gendered differentials in work-history account for 29% of the gender pay gap at the mean and that the effects of women’s reduced attachment vary by income group. We find men to earn a higher wage penalty to part-time work-histories than women, and find no evidence of a penalty to part-time work more generally in poor households. We conclude that gender equalisation policies need to reflect divergent needs by income group.
Published in
Cambridge Journal of Economics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beaf025
ISSN
0309166
Subjects
Notes
Online Early
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright © 2025, © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
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